Monday, March 23, 2009

Travel agencies and airlines long-complained that metasearch tools don't allow for branding and differentiation, but now TripAdvisor's new flight search tool is heeding their messages.TripAdvisor started displaying airline and online travel agencies' branding messages within its flight grid. Again, I'm not talking about ads served above or off to the side of flight-search results, but messaging within the flight grid.When I searched for an LAX-JFK flight, TripAdvisor displayed a flight bookable on VirginAmerica.com, with the tag line, “This is How to Fly;” the same flight through Travelocity, with the tag line, “You’ll Never Roam Alone;” and the Virgin flight through Expedia, with the tag line, “Go With Confidence.”With OTA booking fees tossed aside, at least for now, merchandising and differentiation is key.That's because, as is par for the course, all three companies offered the flight for the same fare, $259.But, at least, for the first time that I’ve seen, the airline and the two OTAs had a chance to get their branding message across.Baby steps, but significant nonetheless.So, I agree with what Yen Lee said in the UpTake Travel Industry Blog that there are still huge opportunities in metasearch and transforming metasearch tools into something that offers a better consumer-shopping experience is key.And as Rick Seaney of FareCompare and Susan Black of Chimney RockPartners commented, it looks like unbundled, a la carte or standalone (you pick the word) airline products, from lounge access to Perrier Jouet, may be the next sweet spot for the airline.com channel. It puts the onus on companies like TripAdvisor, Kayak, Travelzoo, Farecast, FareCompare and Mobissimo, to display these disparate offerings in a consumer-friendly manner. Not easy, at all.

4 comments:

Dennis, one thing that this can lead to is also to say 'student flights, click here' to send niche customers like those of STA Travel to our site without sending unqualified leads. We have been in the game with one or two metas only, perhaps more are now open to this.

Dennis, perhaps now more of the metas will allow niche marketers like us to clarify our brand proposition, such as 'student only'. We have a proposition that matters to a niche, but can only support qualified clicks. Glad to see this direction is gaining traction.Scott HydenSTA Travel

Dennis, i have always thought Kayak had a good shopping UI for flights, but after crushing/buying everyone else, perhaps a little competition will be good! good to see TripAdvisor bringing something new to the game.

it would be GREAT if - as an industry - we get better at helping consumers buy based on factors other then price. i think Bryan and the flight folks at TripAdvisor have done a nice job coming out of the gate.

look forward to your thoughts on fly.com - they have some interesting new features too

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I've followed online travel, its twists, turns and detours, since the beginning (not Adam and Eve, but Rich and Terry), and will follow the aforesaid in this blog. I'm North America editor of Tnooz and I write USA Today's Digital Traveler column. Things not in my resume: I visited Orbitz headquarters pre-launch in 2000 and, left unattended, eavesdropped and examined the whiteboards to learn partnership details; Travelocity's ex-CEO Michelle Peluso credits me with her success (Wharton notwithstanding) after I wrote a sentence (with accompanying photo) mentioning that some of her Site59 women wore fishnet stockings and then airline execs kept the phone lines busy; I once drove to tiny Sherman, Conn., to see where PhoCusWright lives; and I was a nachtportier in a West Berlin hotel in the days (Btw) when a nasty wall split the city. Fyi, the previous stuff wasn't necessarily in chronological order.

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The opinions I express in the Dennis Schaal Blog are my own. Only I could think of this stuff. The opinions uttered or written here in no way reflect on the views of past employers, current partners, future associations (how could they anyway?) or my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Slayton. I don't have a lawyer, but if I had one, he or she probably would have told me to write something like this. Well, maybe not exactly. The Dennis Schaal Blog is Copyright (c) 2009 by Dennis Schaal. All rights reserved.